Archive for March, 2011

This whole column by Garth George is worth a read, but the bit that made me laugh the most was this

Just to show how really upside-down our society has become, the Colmar-Brunton poll of nearly 500 folk in their 20s showed that while females are busy focusing on their careers, it seems the young men they work alongside are dreaming about becoming fathers.

Good gracious me. The grass is blue, the sky is green, and some women don’t even know how to cook a roast chicken any more! Fetch me my fainting couch.

QoT hit it out of the park once again in an excellent post about abortion law reform over at The Standard (also published on her own blog here). But how great a point she made is irrelevant; her shrill, angry, demanding, enraged tone and style has completely ruined any chances of anyone wanting to side with her or give her what she’s asking for. Like a child who demands their parent buy them an ice cream, she’s blown it by not asking nicely.

Or, at least that’s what the commentariat over at The Standard have led me to believe. Yeah, they brought the tone argument with them, and liberally sprayed it about. Swearing is so crude, anger gets you nowhere, maybe if you weren’t so confrontational you might get what you want, and so on.

This is such a classic bullshit derail trotted out every time a feminist displays even a tiny bit of displeasure or anger. Don’t blow your chance honey, you’re only hurting yourself and your cause. Women getting angry? Not on my watch.

Personally, I think the anger and passion and outrage is what best motivates me, so I can’t see those things as anything other than valuable. When something is outrageous and unacceptable, I will get angry about it and refuse to soften my point because other people don’t want to hear about how something is making me angry.

And too many of the comments on QoT’s post on The Standard made me angry. Shit is wrong in the world, and in our society, and I refuse to grovel on my hands and knees, cap in hand, politely asking (but not asking for to much in case I seem demanding, or too often lest it be seen as begging) for just a few more rights please sir. No fucking way. I don’t care if my anger or my confrontational style is perceived as unacceptable: dancing around the issues isn’t going to get anything done, and ‘nice-ing” myself down to appease others is an insult to all the people before me who let their outrage feed their power and motivate their actions.

But if you do want to listen to those helpful people telling you that your anger is hurting the cause and alienating people from it, and you want to know the proper polite way to ask, Boganette has got you covered.

Could this man have said the word “skanks” any more times in his comment about prostitutes in Christchurch??

For the last 20 years the deal was that the skanks stayed in the area over Bealey Ave. We kind of accepted it. But now the skanks are hanging out here, they cross up and down the street and people are really nervous about them and the traffic and people they are attracting. “Yes, it’s legal, but it still doesn’t make it right or acceptable near the homes of decent people. If you have one skank, other skanks will come. It just escalates. Where do you draw the line?”

“If you have one skank, the other skanks will come”. I’m sure they have some kind of skank homing sense, and their skank-y senses tingle, and when one shows up the others will flock there too.

I spent too much time this morning trying to convince a (female) “friend” on Facebook that her statement that

No woman asks to be raped, but behaving like a slutty cock tease in skimpy clothes and dating a psyco isnt exactly the smartest idea.

is actually not ok. And it’s not right. And actually, what really isn’t the smartest idea is being a big, shameless rape apologist who thinks those stupid, slutty teases should’ve known better.

With the aid of Blue Milk’s exception piece, “Don’t Get Raped”, I tried to explain that rapes don’t only happen to women who wear miniskirts and date “bad” guys. This escalated into pointlessness of the “but women rape men too!”, “maybe the rapists were abused as children!” and “how easy is it for a women to go to court these days and accuse any man of rape because she is a psyco and wants revenge?” (direct quote) variety. After I mentioned the fact that the rates of false reports of rape are around about the same as false reports of other crimes, she veered wildly off-topic into asking people to discuss the “psyco” women they knew, and did anyone know a “psyco woman”? Oh, and I did I mention that apparently if you’re with a man who hits you that you have options and you either leave of stick around for another bash? I had no idea it was so simple.

And after that, I was exhausted. Tired from how hard I was trying to convince someone that if anyone is victimized by a rapist- a criminal!- that the blame lies squarely with the person who committed the crime, period. Tired of fighting for myself and my right not to be blamed should anything happen to me, and tired of essentially trying to tell her that if some scumbag should ever victimize her that she didn’t ask for it and it wouldn’t be her fault. I shouldn’t have to fight someone so hard to convince them of something that is beneficial to them (unlike their current belief, which would be detrimental to them should they ever be a victim). I shouldn’t have to tell someone that domestic abuse- which may one day affect them- isn’t as black and white as “leave or stick around for more”, and that abusers often try to create a situation where you have nowhere to go or are scared the abuser will hurt your family, and so you stay.

I am so, so tired of fighting this fight. I shouldn’t even be fighting this fight at all- none of us should be. This shouldn’t even be happening; it should be a given that the victim isn’t to blame for the crime committed by the criminal.

And even more draining is knowing that I can’t get through to this woman, and she’ll continue on in life believing what she does and perpetuating her harmful beliefs to other people. Maybe one of her Facebook friends saw that status about how slutty cock teases should’ve known better (and thus should’ve know tjheir behaviour would have led to rape) and will feel like shit and blame themself for what happened to them. This is the nature of rape apologia: it hurts people.

I hope that one day all this fighting makes things better, and we don’t have to fight this fight anymore.